Papernet took an industrial look at Finland
The Association of Finnish Forest Industries hosted us telling about the major highlights in the Finnish forest industries. Top issues are to lobby the EU to stop the regulatory decision making and take care of the competitiveness of the manufacturing industry in Europe. One special item in Finland is as well how to decrease the need of the Russian wood supply.
The core is in the growth of Europe, not only government growth or demand growth but also in supply needed. How the manufacturing industry in Europe, which will stay and also should to stay get their investments. As Cepi´s chairman, the President and CEO of UPM Mr. Jussi Pesonen has said Europe is really on the cross roads right now how do we make Europe attractive and keep the investments the coming years.
Stora Enso invests in biomaterials
After the media trip Stora Enso came into the headlines after the Managing Director of the company Jouko Karvinen made announcement to leave Stora Enso as soon the company has got a new President and CEO. A big rally was ready in Finland, especially in public discussions. Media remembered that Jouko Karvinen is leaving after having shut down in Stora Enso during his seven years in the company four paper mills, 14 paper machines, two pulp mills, 14 sawn timber mills and 15 000 jobs.
Anyway, Stora Enso reported after first quarter operations about continuous improvement almost all of the company´s businesses. The Group complete the promised EUR 200 million fixed cost improvement compared with 2012, excluding capacity reduction impacts, three months ahead the schedule.
Stora Enso´s top two activities right now are to start the Montes del Plata Pulp Mill in Uruguay one of these days and go on with the consumer board machine investment in Guangxi, China. In Finland the big news was the EUR 110 million investment into Varkaus Paper Mill. The mill´s fine paper machine will be transformed into light weight containerboard machine. Finland is still waiting Stora Ensos decision to invest into a new CLT factory because prefabricated CLT housing business out of cross-laminated timber is booming. Nowadays Stora Enso is running CLT production in Austria.
Biomaterials will be one of the key business in Stora Enso´s product portfolio. Market pulp activities focus growing customer segments in tissue, packaging, hygiene and specialty applications as textiles.
Investment in Sunila, Finland into the lignin extraction is said to be a sign of Stora Enso´s transformation as renewable materials company. It represents the first step towards a new business selling lignin to external customers.
Valmet goes forward
The New Valmet is snealing outdoors from the shadow of Metso. The final service and product portfolio is under progress along their new mission – “Valmet Forward”. In 2013, after the partial demerger Valmet´s result dropped rough into one quarter from the previous year. Company´s net sales was MEUR 2.6. The amount of employees was 11.765.
Valmet was listed on NASDAQ OMX Helsinki the January 2nd this year.
The very beginning of this year has shown incredible flow of new orders into Valmet´s order stock. The new orders cover all Valmet´s business lines from energy production into paper, pulp, board and tissue making. Valmet states that they have number one or two possessions in their all business areas in all markets served. As Valmet concerns they are clear market leader in tissue.
One question appears nowadays as often as Valmet people meet media – how about Metso Automation, which was left into Metso Corporation? The President of Valmet, Pasi Laine says “we are having a good relationship with Metso Automation and we are carrying to keep it.”
Valmet estimates that activity in the services, pulp, energy, board and paper, and tissue markets will remain satisfactory in their short-term outlook.
Where water meets chemistry
Kemira is a global chemicals company serving customers in water-intensive industries. Kemira is there where “water meets chemistry”, they say. The business mission to focus on water is deepening into the remote analytics services. In 2013, Kemira had annual revenue of EUR 2.2 billion and around 4,500 employees.
Kemira is streamlining portfolio repositioning to businesses with high prowth profile. When being the only chemical company dedicated to the water intensive pulp and paper industries the company is actively participating in the consolidation of paper chemicals markets. Now they are having number one or two positions in all regions. Sales volume in this sector was MEUR 1.1.
Kemira is also improving oil, gas and mining process efficiency with chemicals and application knowledge. One of the moves is transitioning towards value driven business model with strong focus on oil and gas in the Americas. To promote this expansion process Kemira has appointed a new President for Oil & Mining division and the Americas. Tarjei Johansen joined Kemira from Schlumberger the 5th of May. – In 2013 the sales of O&M was EUR 311 million.
The third business sector of Kemira is Municipal and Industrial. In Europe Kemira is number one in water treatment chemicals and number two in North America. Last year the sales were EUR 659 million.
This summer Kemira is launching commercial Kemira FlytoLite Online monitoring system. The service opens an advanced online monitoring system for particle size management. It is innovation with patent pending for low consistency suspensions e.g. wet end monitoring.
“Kemira´s Flyto analysis is a great way to map the agglomeration tendency on paper or board machine,” states Mari Zabihian, Senior Manager R&D and Technology, EMEA.
Flyto shows for example is there any effect over fixative addition, does the particle size increase or even agglomerate. And more – what happens to the hydrophobicity over deposit control agent´s addition. Is there any effect over dispersant or passivation agent.
New backup services
The weak growth in the Asian markets failed Konecranes´ operatinals expectations last year. Especially orders from China and India were far from the company´s targets. China is number one customer and Indonesia as well. The turnover of Konecranes was MEUR 2,1. The number of employees was 11,987.
Konecranes is a world-leading group of “Lifting Businesses” as they say, serving a broad range of customers, including manufacturing and process industries, shipyards, ports and terminals
“We are in the changing world we have to change the products when leading the development of the business. Earlier we were talking about pulp and paper, now we have paper and forests. In practice we are widening the range,” tells Hannu Piispanen, Industry Specialist, Pulp and Paper.
There is an addition what we earlier called waste to energy plants. Now it is more and more biofuels plants.
The automation is increasing almost in all Konecranes´ applications. That is why Konecranes has brought internet into their service portfolio. The cranes and other equipment are controlling more and more independently themselves so the supplier has to control the safety and process efficiency in real time.
Konecranes has linked they products into the remote diagnostics systems to follow the operational data and plan the maintenance. Global Technical Center is in Hyvinkää Finland. It gives know how service contact to the global field.
Konecranes saw in April that the growth in industrial production and container traffic continues at moderate pace and below the historical averages. The near-term investment outlook within manufacturing and process industries, as well as container handling, remains uncertain. Anyway, Konecranes sees that there are some positive macroeconomic signs mainly in the developed countries.
Active drive
Kumera Corporation is a family own company dealing with transmissions technology and foundry products having their headquarters in Riihimäki, Finland. The business is branched into three segments, Power Transmissions, Technology division and Foundry division. Kumera had last year a turnover of approximately 100 million and employees some 550. Their business is growing in China especially.
The manufacturing facilities of Power Transmission are in Finland, Norway, Austria and China. The product portfolio consists of mechanical drives for industrial applications, tailor made gear boxes, gear boxes for marine and mechanical drives for pulp and paper industry.
Their latest innovation is Active Drive system where transmission systems need optimal distribution on girth gear teeth throughout years of operation without a need for high accuracy alignment.
“The compact solution utilizes the full load capacity of the valuable girth ring while providing maximum usability and serviceability with minimum apace requirements,” says Jukka Kyttälä, CEO of Kumera.
Kumera states that with the new Active Drive systems girth gear face width can be decreased up to 30 per cent or power rating can be increased up to 50 per cent. The pinion face width can be decreased as well.
AFT focuses in science applied industry
Japanese Aikawa Fiber Technologies is specializing in pulp screening and refining, compact stock preparation and paper machine approach systems. The company´s operational systems are well known as AFT services. AFT`s manufacturing facility in Finland is in Varkaus. Aikawa Group also has production plants in Canada, China, Korea and Japan.
AFT markets their services having a mission of “Science applied”. The offerings include screening, refining, stock preparation and approach flow technologies.
AFT is refocusing its service portfolio from just equipment supplier into a process supplier. They want to be seen as the partner to their customers, who wants to improve the production process efficiency together with the customer. The mainstream of this service is to operate within the customers´ investment budgets and other resources. AFT says that the value creation has to be maximized in energy savings, material savings and efficiency increase.
The Varkaus factory in Finland is said to be the most modern manufacturing plant for the product range that AFT represents. It is built in 1986 but the latest highly automated production line was installed in 2011. The factory has 120 employees.
Pöyry streamline
For at least three years Pöyry has been streamlining its service portfolio in the turmoil of global markets. Pöyry´s business depends on its clients and market behavior. After recent move, divestment in Finland Pöyry looks like to be in some of their targeted business platform.
Pöyry´s new organizational structure was introduced in February 2013. It is based on management consulting, global competence lines and regional operations. In line with this evolution, Pöyry increased its domestic focus and most recently, integrated its local activities in Latin and North America and Asia Pacific into its regional operations as of January 2014. The three other are Central Europe, Northern Europe and Alpine Arc.
On 22nd April 2014 Pöyry announced that it was divesting significant parts of its real estate design and consulting business, and its construction management business for the real estate and infrastructure sectors in Finland. The transactions are in direct alignment with Pöyry´s focused strategy, where Pöyry is developing its services in key domestic markets, as well as strengthening its global competence in energy, industry and management consulting.
Last year the Group´s consolidated net sales amounted to EUR 650.8 million. The order stock totaled EUR 500.0 million at the end of 2013.
In January, Pöyry recognised that the economic and market outlook for 2014 is cautiously optimistic. Pöyry reported that at the end of 2013 there was improving global growth both in the manufacturing and services sectors. The leading indicators in December showed an expansion in new order volumes backed by improving employment data.
In the graphic paper industry the decline in structural consumption is set to continue. However Pöyry estimates that in other forest product industry sectors, the outlook is improving. For energy and other industrial sectors the long-term economic fundamentals remain solid and investment activity is expected to gradually improve. In Europe, growth remains fragile, delaying economic recovery and investments decisions.
After the first quarter in 2014 Pöyry report business sectors remained generally uncertain. Northern Europe, the European energy sector and recent political developments have been raising concerns. In spite of these facts, underlying demand developed steadily, as reported by Pöyry on the 29th of April.
The finnish tour in april was arranged by Teppo Koski Consulting.